We are excited to report that the Quaker Life Council approved investing nearly forty thousand dollars over two fiscal years to raise up a momentous new program called Resource Friends. Resource Friends help our community be healthy and thrive, by providing expert support in areas of need in our monthly meetings and on the yearly meeting level. They are the …

Swarthmore Monthly Meeting has had a honeybee colony for many years. They live high on the eaves on the side of the meetinghouse. On Monday, April 18, the teachers noticed the number of bees had greatly increased and were agitated. We called the College and asked that a beekeeper come right away to assess the situation. We were afraid the bees …

By Jared V At the beginning of March, Salem Quarterly Meeting in South Jersey launched its first electronic bulletin. This monthly “email blast” will work alongside Salem Quarter News, a quarterly print publication, to bring news and information to members and attenders of meetings throughout our area. The genesis of our electronic bulletin was a workshop by Penny Colgan-Davis and Christie …

Over the past seven years the Peace Center of Birmingham and subsequently the Peace and Social Concerns Committee at Birmingham Friends Meeting have raised over $12,400 to purchase 12 land mine detectors. They were bought through the manufacturer, the Schonstedt Instrument Company, which generously matches one for one every landmine detector purchased, doubling the number of detectors that we can count as …

Norval Reece of Newtown Friends Meeting gave a lecture for Western Yearly Meeting in July of 2014 on how good stewardship and good governance make for good outreach. The transcript took a viral tour through the Quaker internet, and we have now posted it to the PYM website below as a source of inspiration for how our continued vitality depends …

Dear Friends, Are you a coffee drinker? A tea person? A chocolate lover? When you buy Coffee, Tea, and Chocolate from Fair Trade sources, you provide small-scale farmers around the world the opportunity to earn a fair price for their products and to contribute to their communities. At Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, we have been engaged in the Equal Exchange Interfaith program …

Philadelphia actor Makoto Hirano gives voice to over thirty characters in a one-man tour-de-force performance about Gordon Hirabayashi. A college student who was simply looking for love and the American Dream, Gordon found himself confronted with the ultimate challenge to his freedom: the US government’s orders to forcibly remove and mass incarcerate people of Japanese ancestry during WWII. Gordon embarks …

Rania Campbell-Cobb is the founding Director of Cloud 9 Rooftop Farm. Cloud 9 offers hands on education about rooftop agriculture and volunteer opportunities, in addition to producing for sale in local markets. She writes the below article describing her work, some of its intellectual underpinnings, and the ministry she hopes to forward with it. Cloud 9 is also steeped in Quaker …

O Love! A Story of Reconciliation and Healing in North Philadelphia Zachary Dutton interviewed O, a member of Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, a few weeks ago about her work in Serenity House, which is a center for healing and reconciliation in North Philadelphia. What follows is a narrative of this interview exploring the many ways in which O’s ministry is …

Benjamin Camp, Children’s Religious Life Program Coordinator, reflects on his transition from membership of Norristown Meeting to one closer to his present residence. As with entering any new, innately idiosyncratic community, the headline “Quaker Meeting” doesn’t give many clues about what we’ll actually encounter within. Like transferring from one branch to another within the same company, the culture, attitudes, and …

Zachary Dutton recently interviewed Melinda Wenner Bradley about the Quaker Religious Education Collaborative (QREC). This is a network whose existence centrally parallels the vision articulated by our new Five Year Plan. It is a great example of the formation of connections between meetings and individuals in our yearly meeting to encourage a similar movement from silos to synergy. Read the …

A Call to Recognize Gifts and Get the Training to Use Them Well Paula J. Teague is a Quaker chaplain and member of Wilmington Friends Meeting. In this post, she reflects on her struggles to discern how her ministry both contradicts and supports the Quaker way within our yearly meeting community. She concludes with the assertion that we need both …

In our 2014 summer issue of the First Day School Threadletter, we published an article from the Coordinator of Western Quarterly Meeting about a new program called “First Day School Convergences.” Then, the program was still in development. Now that one event has happened, we thought we’d update Friends. See below for a note from the Western Quarter Coordinator and the …

Bucks Food for Friends (BFFF) was founded in May 2008 by individual Friends of Bucks Quarterly Meeting, who recognized among both homeless people and the working poor a growing need for access to healthy food. In the nearly six years of operation, the number of people served by the program has increased many times over. The first dinner was attended …

Meetings can make themselves known in their local community by publishing news of their activities in the local paper. Weekly articles tell readers the story of Friends in their community while inviting seekers to visit the meeting. These twelve tips will help meetings share their stories in the press. Adapted from a Workshop by Norval Reece, Newtown Meeting Know your ...

Meetings, large and small, grow and strengthen their membership by inviting the public into their meetinghouses. Outreach events succeed best in attracting seekers when a meeting invites others to join it as the meeting explores its own path. Each of the meetings below planned events that shared what is unique and grounded in Spirit in their witness, ministry and peace …

Kennett Monthly Meeting put many many months into planning our first residential retreat. The starting point was to name what the meeting wanted to get out of the experience so we began with a series of meeting-wide discussions (of course it did, because we are Quakers!). The conversation around what a retreat is and what we would like to get …

Many Friends meetings have minuted their loving support of same-gender marriage. There is now an opportunity to voice support for a Pennsylvania House bill that would afford such marriages the same legal legitimacy as heterosexual ones. HB 1686, introduced by Rep Brian Sims, was referred to Judiciary Committee in mid-October. If your meeting is clear on its support of marriage …

Information about the UN Day of Peace, September 21, was shared at the 2013 Peace & Social Concerns Thread Gathering. Meetings are invited and encouraged to begin thinking now about how they might participate in this international effort. Peace Day Philly offers resources and a model that may be helpful to Friends. In addition, Anne Creter, a member of the ...

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About Philadelphia Yearly Meeting

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting is a Quaker faith community, an association of over 100 Quaker meetings, and an organization - all working together to nurture Quaker faith and practice in today’s world.

Quakerism is a faith of personal experience and direct communion with God, a faith of continuing revelation; and a faith of living our values in the secular world. All who seek to deepen their spiritual lives are welcome!